Commentaria in I Regum (I Samuelis)
5. FIVE GOLDEN EMERODS, AND FIVE GOLDEN MICE,—as expiation for the plague of emerods and mice with which the God of Israel smote you. So images of the members whose health we have received from the saints are wont to be offered, as votive offerings.
Tropologically we are taught here to confess our sins, though shameful, before God, that by this confession they may as it were be gilded. Hear St. Gregory: “Because the foulnesses of sinners are ground down for the price of eternal salvation, by weeping they are gilded.” And after a few words: “While,” he says, “we mourn more attentively our misdeeds, we gild our members to the splendour of justice.” And presently: “The members,” he says, “are gilded, when the body, deformed by the earthly and miry foulness of concupiscences, is changed into the splendour of eternal life; when, namely, it shines by the beauty of holy conversation, which was foul with the stench of sins in the desire of worldly love,” according to the Apostle: “As you have yielded your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity, so now yield your members to serve justice unto sanctification.”
IF PERHAPS HE WILL LIGHTEN HIS HAND FROM OFF YOU, AND FROM YOUR GODS.—Hence it is plain that not only Dagon, but the other gods of the Philistines also, were prostrated and afflicted by God through the ark.
7. AND SHUT UP THEIR CALVES (still sucking) AT HOME,—withdrawing them from their mothers, as the Hebrew and Septuagint indicate, to see whether the cows would run back to their sucking calves, or would go with the ark into Israel. Hence the cows were “lowing,” because they were torn from their calves.
11. AND THEY LAID THE ARK OF GOD UPON THE CART,—at the crossroads, says Josephus, without driver, the five lords of the Philistines looking on, and considering which way the cows would take of themselves, whether that leading to Israel, or another. These were divinatory lots, not suggested by God, and therefore superstitious and unlawful (for the Philistines gave themselves to auguries and soothsayings, as is plain from that of Isaias God directed them, either through angels, or through devils, as Mendoza will have from Origen, instigators of this soothsaying, urged the cows to take the way to Israel, that the Philistines might know from their lots that these plagues had been sent upon them by the God of Israel. So God directed the necromancy of the Pythoness raising Samuel, and brought it about that not a demon invoked by her but Samuel came forth, and announced to Saul his deserved death, 1 Kings 28.
The Philistines sinned here, therefore, both because they tempted the God of Israel, whom from so many plagues they ought to have acknowledged and revered; and because they use augury ... plagues befell them. The former Abulensis denies, Question 18, the latter he passes over: but both Sua[rez] asserts: in the histories of the Saints, their relics carried by horses have stopped at some certain place, so that by this sign they indicated that they wished to be buried and venerated there; but those things were done by God’s leading and instinct. Mystically, the cows lowing and leaving their calves, and carrying the ark straight toward Bethsames, that is, the house of the sun, signify preachers and Saints, who, moved by the spirit of God, straight through mortification of carnal affection toward children and parents, and by good works, concordantly strive toward heaven. So St. Gregory, Eucherius, Rabanus, Rupert, Hugh, Lyranus, Dionysius and others. Hear St. Gregory: “The cows go on, because holy men do good works without ceasing: but they low, because they cannot extinguish carnal desires in themselves without great daily tribulation. For to low pertains to the labour of subduing the flesh, but to go on to perseverance of good will. For while, against nature, the flesh is forced to repress carnal motions, it as it were lows while it goes, because it is forbidden to fulfil its own desires.” And presently: “Well,” he says, “are these two things described in the progress of the Saints, to go on and to low; because, although in them, hastening to the heavenly country, the instancy of desire is great, nevertheless the patience of labour is unconquerable.” He proves it by the example of the Apostle saying: “I press toward the mark,” yet he lowed, saying: “I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and captivating me in the law of sin. Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Romans 7, verses 23 and 24. So therefore says St. Gregory: “The cows low, but go on; because holy men, though great are the temptations they endure, yet leave not the way to the heavenly country.” More on this our Mendoza heaps up here.
12. AND THE KINE TOOK THE STRAIGHT WAY THAT LEADETH TO BETHSAMES.—God willed that the ark be led by the cows rather to Bethsames than to another city, because Bethsames was near Philistia, from which the ark was brought back (as is plain from the Chorography of Adrichomius) and was a priestly city: but it befitted the Priests to guard and care for the ark. Bethsames is the same as house, that is, seat and city of the Sun. It was built by the Jews after the likeness of Heliopolis of Egypt. For as the Jews took golden calves as gods from the Egyptians, so also the worship of the Sun, says our Sanchez, Jeremias 43, at the end of the chapter. Moreover this Bethsames was not in the tribe of Benjamin, as St. Jerome writes in Hebrew Places, nor in the tribe of Dan, as Adrichomius will have, but in the tribe of Juda; as is expressly said in 4 Kings 14, verse 11. There was another Bethsames also in the tribe of Nephthali, as is plain Josue 19, 38; and another in the tribe of Issachar, as is clear Josue 19, 22. See what is said on Jeremias 43, 13.
14. AND THE CART CAME INTO THE FIELD OF JOSUE,—or Jesus, who was a type of Jesus Christ; for He is a Bethsamite, that is, an inhabitant of the house of the Sun; because He, as the divine Sun, diffuses the rays of His wisdom and grace round about on His faithful. Hear St. Justin, Dialogue Against Trypho: “They did not come to the place from which the ark had been snatched: but into the field of a certain man Jesus, or Josue as he was surnamed, who had been renamed by the name Jesus, and who led the people into the land, and divided it to them by hereditary right: into which field when they had come, they stopped. By which deed it is indicated that they were led by the power of the name: not otherwise than the former people was led into the land by him who received the name Jesus.”
AND LAID THE KINE UPON IT, A HOLOCAUST TO THE LORD.—Abulensis disputes here whether this immolation was lawful, and adduces many things which prove it unlawful, namely first, that they sacrificed female cows, whereas by the law the victim ought to be male; secondly, outside the tabernacle and without an altar; thirdly, by laymen: but this extraordinary case of so wonderful a bringing back of the ark demanded an extraordinary sacrifice and joy, says Bede, that they should immolate the cows that carried the ark to God, and that before the ark, which was holier than the tabernacle; but only by priests: for Bethsames was a priestly city. Moreover the altar was this stone on which the Hebrews tell that Abraham sacrificed. The stone was a type of Christ, who is the corner stone of the Church.
17. AND THESE ARE THE GOLDEN EMERODS.—These golden emerods and mice, says Abulensis, Question 13, the Hebrews either melted into some sacred vessels; or preserved as a votive offering in the tabernacle for the memory of this divine power and just vengeance, as also the brazen serpent, Numbers 21, and the censer of Core, Dathan and Abiron, Numbers 16.